In the early 1950s, shortly before the septecentennial of Dante’s birth, Dali was invited by the Italian government to produce a series of
illustrations for a deluxe edition of The Divine Comedy to be published
by La Libreria dello Stato in Rome. Between 1951 and 1960 Dali created a
series of 101 watercolors for the book, which was unhappily never
completely realized in its textural form.
The watercolors were exhibited at the Palazzo Pallavici in Rome.
However, the reception of Dali’s project in Italy was extremely
negative, since it did not seem appropriate for a Spanish (rather than
Italian) painter, much less an irreverent Surrealist and sometime
fascist sympathizer, to illustrate a commemorative edition of the
greatest Italian poet’s masterpiece to be published by the State Press.
Although the project was dropped in Italy, Dali strove to see
its completion. In the late 1950s Dali met the French publisher, Joseph
Foret, who had issue Dali’s series of lithographs for Cervantes’s Don
Quixote in 1957-1958. After viewing a group of the watercolors for The
Divine Comedy at Dali’s studio, Foret enthusiastically set out to find
support for the creation of The Divine Comedy.
He took it to the well known French editors and book publishers
Les Heures Claires where he received equally enthusiastic support for
the project. The directors of Les Heures Claires than immediately took
full charge of the project; Mr. Riviere, the Financial Director, Mr.
Blainon, the Marketing and Sales Director, and Mr. Estade, the Artistic
Director. It was Mr. Estade’s responsibility to work directly with Dali
and the engravers to create the works.
The engraver, Raymond Jacquet with his assistant, Mr. Tarrico,
created the wood blocks necessary to transfer Dali’s watercolors to wood
engravings, a medium chosen because of its ability to recreate subtle
washes of color and delicate linear drawing.
In Dali’s case anywhere from twenty to as many as thirty-seven
separate blocks were needed to reproduce the watercolors. Although in
the 1970s and 1980s Dali’s forays into printmaking were often embedded
in controversy, due mostly to the undocumented and seemingly unlimited
printing of some of his images, this series of prints was strictly
controlled, and the approximately 3000 woodblocks used to create them
were destroyed after the printing. Furthermore, it is clear that Dali’s
interests in such a project were literary, artistic and spiritual,
rather than financial.